Katie Clem posted a video on YouTube this month of her daughter Lily’s poignant and funny reaction to her sixth birthday present, a trip to Disneyland, for her friends and family. Then it went viral.

In three weeks it has been watched more than five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college.

Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.

Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that.

You know we’re fans of TED.com and of video sites in general. Now some kind person called Jim Melfi has published a website listing TED and 56 other resources, from San Francisco to Slovenia, covering topics such as Design, Sustainability, Economics (the Davos video group is interesting, not to mention topical) and Technology. There’s also a separate section for Universities and Colleges of Higher Education that publish their content online.

You can visit Video Talks by clicking on the picture here or on the link in the Blogroll section on the right-hand side of this page!

About VideoTalks.org: The initial idea for this website was developed in 2009 after realizing that one had to search many sites to find the ones listed above. At the time, I had no idea that the Internet contained such a rich variety of viewpoints from men and women who are truly making a difference in our world community. This site is certainly dedicated to those of us who want quality substance beyond the fog of mindless chatter and short sound bites. I welcome your suggestions regarding other sites and speakers. Jim Melfi.

Strange Random Video Quote:

In seven to ten years video traffic on the Internet will exceed data and voice traffic combined – Bob Metcalfe

Some time ago, we posted a video of poems in the Barcelona Metro as part of the Spring Festival. Now, from the maker(s) of that video, we have a new one entitled A Year in Barcelona, a personal look at events of the last 12 months in BCN.

EnglishCentral is a new website and community based on learning English through watching videos and practising pronunciation. Despite being founded only 3 months ago, it already has an impressive collection of videos in categories like Business, Social, Dining, Games or Politics. Registration is free and you can follow your progress from your online account.

You can also watch a demo if you’d like more information about how the site works (note: you must have a microphone attached before starting the demo. If not, the programme will freeze).

So now the fun starts. Sign in to your account and choose a video to watch. For example, the trailer of Iron Man 2. This is the screen layout you’ll see (we’ve coloured the image to help explain it).

At the bottom of the screen, you have the option to pause the video after each line (in purple), change the microphone options if necessary and also share the video with friends. Above this, in yellow, is a time line showing you where the spoken parts are – these are the shapes on the line. You can also fast forward or rewind the video using the buttons on the left.

The next line up has the record button, the subtitle in English and the option to hide the line, in case you don’t want subtitles. Lastly, if you watch the video line by line, you have the possibility of repeating the line and even slowing down the audio, which could be very useful depending on the speed of the original!

As you work through the exercise, you will see a progress bar at the top-right of the video, which also shows the number of points you score for your pronunciation. If you need more challenges, you’ll find another section which says “What Next?”, with additional exercises for you to try.

Probably the best advice is to go and try out the system for yourself. Please let us know what you think!

NOTE: if you’re already an EXIT Languages student and you’d like an account linked to ours, please leave us a message at the bottom of this post and we’ll send you a link where you can sign up and we can help you monitor your progress.

Thanks to those of you who have added comments and also spoken to us directly about the blog, we appreciate and encourage it!

We’ve added a couple of new elements which we thought you’d like to know about.

Under certain videos, you’ll now see a little graphic like this. If you click on it, you’ll be able to see the video in High Quality and widescreen. It doesn’t work with all videos and depending on your internet connection, the playback may not be very fluent fluid, but try it, we can recommend it!

At the bottom of the right column, you’ll find a new video player, including some of the ones you may have seen already and a new collection of mostly comedy ones. You can watch the videos directly from the page by simply clicking on the image or description.

At the bottom of each article, you’ll find a rating system, from 0 to 5 stars (terrible to excellent). Please let us know what you think by rating and / or leaving a comment!

Finally, we’ve limited the number of posts on a page to 3, to avoid excessive scrolling. You can navigate by clicking on the Older / Newer Entries links at the bottom of each page and don’t forget that you can search by Category or Tag (Keyword) from the right column.

Thanks again for your support!

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Strange Random Language Fact:

“Rhythms” is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.